Thursday, January 22, 2015

Not the end of the world

In 2012 Colorado legalised marijuana. In 2014, after hashing out the details around quality control and taxation, they opened the first pot stores to the public. From the way conservatives talked about it, you'd think the world would end. So did it?

No:
It's been a year since Colorado became the first state in the US to legalise marijuana, and its impact on health, crime, employment and other factors can now be more empirically measured.

So, did it bring about an apocalypse leaving the streets strewn with out-of-work addicts as some Republicans feared?

"We found there hasn't been much of a change of anything," a Denver police officer told CBC this week.

"Basically, officers aren't seeing much of a change in how they do police work."

[...]

Impaired driving, property crime and violent crime were all dropping in Denver prior to legalisation, and the trend has only continued. Even drug use among young people is down, the report claims.


In short, legalisation works, if done properly. And if the Americans can do it, so can we - and in the process free up our police to target real crime.